Clem Fandango

Jonah Keri, just going off his own formula, pegs the Cubs as the 13th best destination for Prince Fielder... http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7359082/who-sign-prince-fielder He says the Rays are the #1 best fit for Fielder

But they appealed so it's going to take longer now. File this under the "Who gives a [expletive]?" folder http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7360235/barry-bonds-sentenced-two-years-probation-30-days-house-arrest

I love/hate the way this front office handles info leaks. Love it because we never show our hand, which Hendry was always terrible at doing. But I hate it because I hate not knowing for sure what my favorite team is up to

Yup. Baseball cube used to be pretty much the only mainstream (in the baseball world) site with minor league stats (except milb.com) and had a niche there until baseball reference took over. On a similar topic, as a guy who loves statistics, I still occasionally get wowed about how much data you can find on baseball reference. I used to exclusively go to ESPN for player pages (and I still do when I'm bored and want to see what counting stats players are on pace for just for fun)...since then I've started to use BR more and more as the site got nicer and cleaner...loved when they added the feature that highlights the row that you're mousing over...makes it far easier to read. And the minor league stats were a great addition. Lately I've been liking Fangraphs player pages more and more, though. I use B-R for quick counting stat lookups, and FanGraphs for sabr stuff. I use Google Chrome and I love it, but unless I haven't figured it out, I'm missing the feature in Firefox where I can choose multiple search engines for my search box. I had FanGraphs & B-R in there so it would make player lookup a cinch. Baseball Cube and Prospectus, too, just for good measure

Basically more info regarding that NY Post article...

If that's what Zimmermann can consistently put up, and Darvish can match it, I'd be a happy camper.

The drop off in talent between Felix Hernandez and everyone else on the entire list is pretty substantial (you could argue David Price isn't far behind). It depends on which one of those four that we'd get comparable production from out of Darvish. If we got Hernandez like production I'd pay the rumored $100 million posting fee + contract and never think twice about it. If we paid that much and got Gallardo like production out of it I'd be very satisfied, but not overly excited. Cueto I think was smoke and mirrors this year. He's a nice pitcher but not worth this amount of money. Zimmermann is nice but he hasn't logged enough full time service because of injuries to really know if his true production is worth gambling that much on.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7356002/panel-study-major-league-baseball-needs-international-player-draft

Yesssss

I'm genuinely a little shocked he didn't sign a bigger contract. Figured he'd be able to get much more than that on the market with such a weak crop of 3B

$134,000,000 opening day payroll

The fact that the baseball budget will remain the same and it appears we can't spend as much on IFA or the draft would seem to suggest so. We just blew a huge chunk of the baseball budget on a McDonald's. You gotta spend money to make money

Dave Schoenfield has already made the bold assumption that Texas will win, and makes no mention of the Cubs... http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/19252/yu-darvish-why-hell-end-up-with-texas

Yeah, the way she phrases it sounds like this 10 year offer the Cardinals made was never actually real, saying stuff like what we heard in the news was lies? If the Cardinals never offered a 10 year deal, I get it, but there were news reports abound that said that wasn't the case. Then again ,she said if they did offer what the rumored amount was they would've stayed. Who knows. What's done is done, no looking back now.

Time to buy low on Pedro Alvarez!

I think you're severely underestimating Chris Young's worth in this deal. He's been worth 9.2 wins over the past two season whereas Ethier has been worth 5.1.

Completely glossed over it. Honestly wasn't paying attention to that... I fixed it so no one has to worry about that now

He called Jered Weaver Jeff Weaver in this speech, lol

Fixed it... http://i.imgur.com/B48TN.jpg

Unrelated to the topic, but related to the link...... I had forgotten that The Baseball Cube had ever existed

Rays lock up Matt Moore for guaranteed 5-year/$14 million deal, with options/incentives to push it to 8 year deal. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7335303/source-matt-moore-tampa-bay-rays-reach-five-year-14-million-deal This is what I wish the Cubs would do with Castro

And I tend to agree. I'm not saying not signing him was a dumb business decision, I'm just a little more of the belief that you don't let once in a lifetime players go. I think Pujols' value transcended what he did on the diamond for the Cardinals and I would think that'd be worth more to the franchise. Handing out a contract like this to Pujols isn't like handing one out to the Alfonso Soriano's or Jayson Werth's of the world. Pujols is in his own stratosphere. I completely understand why they didn't budge, I just think they should've bitten the bullet, and not just because I want to see their finances crippled because they're a division rival. Look at Jeter. No [expletive] way he's worth his contract, but they pay him anyways because he's Jeter. That's what Pujols is to the Cardinals. He's their patriarch. I understand the Yankees are not the Cardinals and clearly the Cardinals were not willing to budge financially... I don't know, it just seems surreal to not see Pujols in a Cardinals uniform. I guess the purist in me is a little upset. I genuinely would've liked to see Pujols play his entire career with the Cardinals. I'm not upset he's gone and out of the division, and I would've loved to have him on the Cubs, but if he went back to the Cardinals it wouldn't have upset me one iota, because Pujols staying with the Cardinals his entire career would've been good for baseball

That's not how it works. Yeah, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And aside from ludicrously calling Pujols a traitor or acting like he owes something to fans, people are generally okay with him not getting a legacy deal. Pujols was [expletive] amazing in 2008. It was incredible watching him play, but it would've been more incredible watching him in the postseason. Watching old, lumbering 38-year-old Pujols make $25-27 million and hit like a normal guy wouldn't be thrilling. And unless they got extremely lucky in subsequent drafts and [expletive] out valuable players like diarrhea their chances of competing would've been severely compromised because of his contract. That's the reality of being a mid-market team. St. Louis is on the upper crust of mid-market teams. Out of 30 teams they've routinely ranked somewhere between the 10th or 13th highest payroll in MLB, and had the 5th highest payroll in the NL this year. Zack Cox and Shelby Miller are two prospects who are seemingly primed to be able to contribute to the big league ball club in a couple years, conveniently when guys like David Freese start to get expensive and when guys like Kyle Lohse and Jake Westbrook come off the books (roughly $20 million of payroll) $3.4 million dollars a year does not cripple a team from competing. If you have a good GM, he'll adapt and find a way to work around it. Over the course of 10 years that price hike does not come out to that much more money, clearly. If one win is valued at $5 million then the difference here is a player worth about a 0.7-0.9 WAR that you'd be missing out on. If you can't find someone internally for league minimum to provide that then you can probably find someone on the FA market for less than $3.4 million to provide that. It's really not that difficult to replace that production. Personally I think Pujols can manage at least a 5-win season for the majority of that contract, which if that's the case then at $25.4 million you'd be getting him at just about what he's worth on a baseball diamond, if not less than what he's worth for some of that contract if he performs better than this past season, but he still has value to that city and not just to the team. He's an icon there. Or at least he was. A 38 year old Pujols was going to be lumbering around making at least $22 million had he accepted the Cards offer, so one way or the other his contract was going to end up handcuffing you no matter what when he's in his late 30's. If you're willing to play the numbers with Pujols and you understand that offering him $22 million a year might put your team in a financial bind in the future, but you're willing to go that far, you then need to decide if it's worth the extra $3.4 million to retain someone who is more to that city than just the Cardinals first baseman. Apparently it wasn't, so they lost him... Because of $3.4 million dollars per year (a Ryan Theriot) and/or a .8 win player (an Aaron Miles). If you don't think that a) you can replace either of those guys internally or b) Pujols won't perform enough to makeup for the tragic loss of such a player, then I don't know what to tell you. This debate feels like some weird alternate dimension where a Cubs fan is trying to justify why the Cardinals should've kept Albert Pujols, and Cardinals fans are trying to justify why they shouldn't care.

The Cardinals pushed to 10 years and raised their offer to what, $220 million? So $22 million AAV? He's getting $25.4 million AAV in Anaheim. That's a $3.4 million difference. $3.4 million extra per year that the Cardinals would've had to pay on top of the offer they were comfortable giving him over the same amount of years. Ryan Theriot cost them $3.3 million this year. If you aren't willing to make a player like Ryan Theriot, i.e. a guy in arbitration who can probably be replaced internally very easily at league minimum, a sacrificial lamb in order to accommodate arguably the greatest baseball player many of us will ever see play the game in our entire lives then you deserve to lose him.

Albert took the money the Cardinals SHOULD HAVE paid him, but they didn't because they don't understand that they just got the greatest player on the planet for the previous 10 years at $100 million. Albert already gave the Cardinals a hometown discount by being insanely cheap for his production value during his entire tenure in St. Louis. You wanna miss out on one of the greatest players to play the game over $50 million? So be it. Albert probably won't be worth it by the end of that contract for the Angels, but even if the same situation happened in St. Louis, he'd still be eternally loved and revered because of who he is and what he represents to that team. They're fools for letting him go. You don't like paying him that much in his twilight years? Well guess what, you got 10 years to plan a team to build around him (and to do it through the draft so his supporting cast isn't expensive) when the time comes so his contract doesn't make the overall payroll bloat, buuuuut you wanted to save a little extra coin. And you lost. Smooth. I think the Cardinals are idiots for not ponying up the dough. He deserved it after playing well below his market value for 10 years in that city.